Devil's Due (2014)

When I watched Devil's Pass last year, I thought that I wouldn't see a found-footage film as bad - Devil's Due has proven me wrong.

The film starts with a couple, Zach and Samantha McCall, getting married and then going on honeymoon to some south American country. They document their journey through the back streets of some this dive with their conveniently handy camera. They party through the night - dancing in the streets at the local festival and drinking. They end up in some seedy backstreet club with a taxi driver they just met.... What happens to the couple after that is a mystery and upon their return home they discover that Samantha is pregnant..?

For the next sixty completely tiresome minutes, you are submitted to the most disjointed and boring drivel ever to be put on film - easily one of the most boring films I have ever seen - culminating in a bloodbath and a 10 minute CGI exhibition.

Devil's Due takes the top spot as the worst found-footage film I have seen so far, stay well clear.

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Alien Abduction (2014)

Alien Abduction starts off like The Blair Witch Project, with documentary style clips of interviews with local people recounting their tales of the strange lights seen in the area and mysterious disappearances on the woods.

The rest of the film consists of footage filmed by a family of campers as they venture up into the hills. The filming is done by the youngest boy (who is autistic). The family soon become lost and run out of gas. Stranded in a tunnel, they find abandoned cars with no drivers to be found... then the aliens arrive.

The CGI and sound effects during the abduction scenes are chilling and scary, and the quick, flickering filming style all adds to the unsettling atmosphere. The film is perfectly paced, maintaining the tension throughout, and a mixture of great lighting effects and editing make the film genuinely scary, cover-your-eyes viewing.

Eventually the family take refuge in home of a local redneck. The young autistic boy uses the camera as a kind of alien detector (with picture distortions being the telltale signs of an alien presence).  The aliens terrorize the group in the small log cabin, forcing them out into the woods; this is were the film takes on the 'Blair Witch' style. The scenes when the kids are running around in the dark woods with a dimly lit camera were very suspenseful; I was waiting for one of the aliens to jump out at any moment.

After years of those crappy Paranormal Activity films, Alien Abduction is refreshing change; the best found-footage film I've seen in years, and is a must see.

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Snowpiercer (2014)

Snowpiercer is a cross between Elysium and The Raid on a train, and is basically an allegorical reflection of modern society. Everything takes place on a huge train that circles a frozen wasteland earth. Years earlier scientists released a chemical into the atmosphere in an attempt to stop global warming and inadvertently started a new ice-age. Seeing the impending doom of mankind, a genius called Wilford (Ed Harris) designed the huge train, which uses the earths magnetic field for propulsion..

The train has a class system, with the lowest toward the back of the train and highest toward the front. The people in the tail section live in squaller, packed together on cramped, filthy shelves, with the only food available being black blocks of jelly called "protein blocks". Curtis (Chris Evans) is one of peasants from the tail section - sick of the living conditions, constant killings and lack of food, Curtis plans a uprising.

The population of the train is kept under control by periodical sacrifices in honor of the demigod "Wilford". The sacrifices always come from the tail section of course, and the people are often told to be grateful by their rich, well fed oppressors. The revolutionaries are shocked to discover the way that people live towards the front of the train - with a constant supply of meat, fresh fish, vegetables and eggs. They also discover, to their horror, what those "protein bars" are made of.

On there their way through the train, Curtis, and his friends encounter a carriage full of henchmen armed with machetes and axes - this is a brilliant fight scene. With around 100 men cutting each other to ribbons in a tight train carriage with blood spraying on the windows and some nice slow motion edits.

I'm kind of surprised the film has not been criticized the way Elysium was, because it's subtle critique of society is almost identical. Anyway, Snowpiercer is a descent Sci-Fi drama, with great editing throughout, and some solid performances from the main characters.

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The Invoking (2013)

Well, what can I say...quite possibly the worst horror film that I have ever seen! The acting (if you can call it that) was absolutely horrendous. The story was stupid and made no sense,  it wasn't scary at all! The props and special effects were shit!. I just can't believe I wasted 90 minutes of my life watching this shit; the only thing it 'Invoked' in me was boredom.

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Open Grave (2014)

Open Grave starts confusingly and pretty much maintains the confusion throughout. This mystery/survival flick, kicks off with a man waking up in an pit full of dead bodies in the middle on nowhere. He soon finds his way into a nearby house, where he meets a group who say they have just woken as well.

The next hour basically consists of the group aimlessly roaming around trying to figure out what has happened. The story unfolds arduously slow, as the members of the group claim to recognize each other and suffer strange flashbacks, they also begin to display symptoms of some kind of psychosis, and start turning on one another.

The story is predictable as hell, a textbook shock-reveal story, which is as poorly executed as it is boring to watch. After an hour of pointless flashbacks and screaming at each other, the group finally discovers the truth.

I don't want to give too much away, but the plot twist basically involves a deadly virus and a military conspiracy. The acting was a bit ropey at times, the only exception being  Sharlto Copley's performance. The last fifteen minutes are the best of the film, as everything starts to fall apart, and Copleys character fights for survival.

Open Grave could have been so much better if it had a bigger budget and a better script, its a classic case of a good idea, poorly executed.

 

 

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The Bay (2012)

My first thoughts when I started watching The Bay were: "oh no, not another found footage film", which was justified considering how many bad found footage films have been made over the last 5 years.

If anything, The Bay is more original and interesting than the other found footage films. The story centers around a small town coastal town located next to an inland bay. The towns folk start falling victim to a mysterious illness, that causes huge boils to form on the skin.  The plot is split between 4 perspectives of the crisis. One is the found footage of a woman trapped on the island and she recounts how everything started and how she came to be trapped. The other cameras mainly focus on the hospital and a doctor there who keeps in touch the local CDC office - keeping survivors to date on the situation.

The other storyline centers upon a family who leave the island on a boat just before the crisis starts who are unaware of the mayhem ensuing on the island behind them. The family return towards the end of the film to discover the town littered with dead bodies.

I like how the film has multiple focus points and storylines which is what makes it unique among found footage films - which usually have a single camera in one location. The special effects were good, with the boils on the peoples skins looking realistic and disgusting.

The flicking the camera  from location to location does make the film seem slightly disjointed at times, and the filming style tends to be more documentary-like rather then horror found footage style. That being said, not a bad effort, not brilliant, but one of the better found footage films of recent years. 

 

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Raze (2014)

Raze is an extreme low budget horror with plenty of over-the-top violence. The film begins with Rachel Nichols being released from a cell in an underground prison. She meets another women in the brightly lit red corridor. The pair soon find themselves in a stone walled circle and it becomes obvious to them both what this area is for - its a fighting ring.

The other women, Sabrina (Zoe Bell), launches a vicious attack on Rachel Nichols, knocking here to the ground and hitting her with punch after punch until her face is nothing more then a bloody mush. The scene is very disturbing especially the wet pounding noises of the punches.

The fact that the best a most well known actress in the film dies within the first 5 minutes, is the biggest let down and most ridiculous part of the film. The rest of the film basically involves scene after scene of the same extreme fight violence, in which Sabrina must fight against the   many other imprisoned woman.

Their captures tell them that the last remaining women left alive in this gruesome fight tournament will be set free. The film is basically one gory fight after another with little meaningful dialogue or character development in between. If pure violence and gore is your thing then this is the film for you. Overall though Raze is a poor effort with a completely predictable ending.

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